Advertising forms an important part of broadcast programming including broadcast video (television), radio and printed media. The revenues generated from advertisers subsidize and in some cases pay-entirely for programming received by subscribers. For example, over the air broadcast programming (non-cable television) is provided entirely free to viewers and is essentially paid for by the advertisements placed in the shows that are watched. Even in cable television systems and satellite-based systems, the revenues from advertisements subsidize the cost of the programming, and were it not for advertisements, the monthly subscription rates for cable television would be many times higher than at present. Radio similarly offers free programming based on payments for advertising. The low cost of newspapers and magazines is based on the subsidization of the cost of reporting, printing and distribution from the advertising revenues.
Techniques for inserting pre-recorded spot messages into broadcast transmission have been known. Generally, broadcast video sources (i.e., TV networks, special interest channels, etc.) schedule their air time with two types of information: xe2x80x9cprogrammingxe2x80x9d for the purpose of informing or entertaining, and xe2x80x9cavailsxe2x80x9d for the purpose of advertising. The avails may occupy roughly 20-25% of the total transmitting time, and are usually divided into smaller intervals of 15, 30, or 60 seconds.
In many prior art systems, the insertion of advertisements in avails is handled by a combination of cue-tone detectors, switching equipment and tape players which hold the advertising material. Upon receipt of the cue tones, an insertion controller automatically turns on a tape player containing the advertisement. Switching equipment then switches the system output from the video and audio signals received from the programming source to the output of the tape player. The tape player remains on for the duration of the advertising, after which the insertion controller causes the switching equipment to switch back to the video and audio channels of the programming source. When switched, these successive program and advertising segments usually feed to a radio-frequency (RF) modulator for delivery to the subscribers.
Many subscriber television systems, such as cable television are currently being converted to digital equipment. These new digital systems compress the advertising data according to a decompression standards, such as a Motion Picture Experts Group (MPEG) compression standard (currently MPEG-2 standard). The compressed data is then stored as a digital file on a large disk drive (or several drives). Upon receipt of the cue tone, the digital file is spooled (xe2x80x9cplayedxe2x80x9d) off of the drive to a decompressor. The video and accompanying audio data are decompressed back to standard video and audio, and switched into the video/audio feed of the RF modulator for delivery to the subscriber.
A prior art (present model) of providing advertisements along with actual programming is based on linked sponsorship. In the linked sponsorship model, the advertisements are inserted into the actual programming based on the demographic information related to the viewers/subscribers. However, the ability to transmit information digitally allows programming and advertisements to be transported from various geographic locations and arranged in a fashion which permits an optimized program to be presented to a subscriber.
The transition to the digital age permits a migration to new methods of advertising based on what is termed orthogonal sponsorship. In orthogonal sponsorship, the advertisements are targeted at subscribers based on a determination that the advertisement will be of interest to the subscriber and that the subscriber is likely to ultimately purchase the product or service being advertised.
The digital systems are capable of handling both linked sponsorship, orthogonal sponsorship and a combination of both. However, what is required is a method and apparatus for identifying advertising opportunities, presenting those opportunities to advertisers, receiving information about the advertisements, determining the ability to insert the advertisements, managing the insertion process, and returning to the program in the digital video arena.
The present invention is a method and apparatus for the managing advertisements in a digital environment, including methods for selecting suitable advertising based on subscriber profiles, and substituting advertisements in a program stream with targeted advertisements.
The Ad Management System (AMS) of the present invention manages the sales and insertion of digital video advertisements (hereinafter xe2x80x9cadsxe2x80x9d) in telecommunications systems, such as cable television (CATV), switched digital video (SDV), and streaming video (Internet) based environments. The AMS provides advertisers an ability to describe their advertisements in terms of target market demographics, required ad bandwidth, ad duration, and other ad specific parameters.
The AMS receives the ad descriptions that include some or all of the aforementioned parameters, and matches the ads to the advertising opportunities (xe2x80x9cavailsxe2x80x9d) available in the programming stream. The AMS tracks different avails including duration and bandwidth of the avail, and uses a number of schemes to determine if the ad can be placed in the avail. In one embodiment, the ads are received in a high resolution state with minimum compression, and are compressed to a predetermined available bit rate (ABR) bandwidth.
One of the key functions of the AMS is its ability to allow ads to be matched to groups of subscribers (e.g. nodes in CATV environments) or to individual subscribers in the SDV or streaming video environments. The service is provided at no cost to the subscriber/consumer, however, the economic efficiencies are created and may be used to provide a revenue stream to the cable operator, profiler and ad service operator.
Another key aspect of the present invention is one or more privacy features wherein the raw consumer/subscriber data is maintained private on a Secured Correlation Server (SCS). The raw consumer/subscriber data is not available for sale or is not accessible by third parties. Thus, the AMS forms part of a matching service, in which advertisers work in conjunction with subscribers, profilers (such as video surfstream profilers, Internet profilers, and retail outlets), and network operators to allow subscribers to receive more targeted ads while protecting the privacy of the subscribers. The network operator may be a cable, Digital Subscriber Line (DSL), or satellite network operator. Subscribers receive the benefits of being able to have advertisements which are more targeted to their lifestyle in addition to receiving discounts from retailers and service providers.
Furthermore, a method of dynamic ad linking is presented in which a present ad in an actual programming (e.g., a primary program stream) can be replaced by another ad targeted at the subscriber. A plurality of different schemes may be used for dynamic linking, e.g., the ads may be statistically multiplexed within a program stream in real-time. Alternatively, a local storage may be used to store the ad for subsequent insertion into the program stream.
These and other features and objects of the invention will be more fully understood from the following detailed description of the preferred embodiments, which should be read in light of the accompanying drawings.